ZURICH – In a stunning conference today in front of the international press, evolutionary biologists from the University of Zurich reported that their studies reveal humans are evolving into none other than self-righteous, book-reading capybaras.

“We all know human beings came from prehistoric apes, and these prehistoric apes in turn came from primitive unicellular aquatic organisms. As our 8-year research into the trend of human evolution concludes, we are confidently predicting that humans will eventually evolve into self-righteous, book-reading capybaras,” the team’s head scientist Dr. Florian Bircher said.

Dr. Bircher was quick to follow up his statement when a panicked buzz began to sweep the packed room in the Zurich Marriott Hotel.

“Settle down. Settle down. I know you were expecting people to evolve into big-headed bug-eyed, grey aliens or into something like the Kardashians, but there’s absolutely no scientific evidence that supports such belief. In any case, people are too fat and lazy to evolve into something beautiful,” he added.

Capybaras, the team of scientists explained, are amazingly like human beings. These giant rodents are extremely sociable with one male usually mating with two females (yes, like a lot of men you know). Semi-aquatic, they spend lots of time in the water but they can also run really fast on the ground much like your coworker who regularly shifts between jogging and swimming in his hopelessly predictable life.

“But the most striking similarity is that capybaras never stop eating plants because they’re hardcore herbivores. As more and more people lose their ability to eat meat without imagining the animal on the plate as their pet, you can see how vegetarianism and veganism will eventually lead to an all-grass, all-bark, all-day capybara diet,” Dr. Bircher said.

The future human-capybara race will be pansexual and in fact will “hump anything that moves,” according to scientists.

The big difference between capybaras in the wild today and these future human-capybara hybrids is that the latter will be very self-righteous. And they’ll read books.

“In all my years of debating with people as an evolutionary biologist with the highest academic honors, I still haven’t met one person who admitted they were wrong. In fact, the homeless guy I had an argument yesterday about basketball pretty much said I’m a moron and I should just kill myself because I don’t know shit about what I was talking about. Furthermore, all my friends think they’re better than me. This unique trait will definitely be passed down to our giant rodent descendants whom we project would rather commit suicide than admit someone else is right.”

“Plus they’ll read books, I should add. They wouldn’t want to be caught without a book in their webbed hands. It’s just going to be a sign of high capybara culture or something like that.”

“But in the end, they’re still rodents. So they’ll breed like rabits and live like rats, thereby pushing our kind to extinction. Oh, and by the way, they’ll be pansexual–actually, they’ll hump anything that moves.”

Dr. Bircher and his team’s study can be read in this month’s Journal of Evolutionary Biology.